REPORT OF BRITISH COMMISSIONERS. 209 



on the 12tli September, at the Island of Juan Fernandez, "We went on 

 shore, but could hardly sett a foot down, the seals lay so thick on the 

 l)lace. Besides we saw a great number of sea-lyons, not unlike o'tlier 

 lyoiis in countenance, colour, and fierceness. Tlicy had no fleet but 

 flins. 



"As for the seals they were of a dark colour and grissled, but under 

 the h)iig ])ile there was couched a fur of an incomparable liDcness, that 

 if it (iould be felt it would answer all ye ends of beaver furr, wherefore 

 a ^reat many of their skins were brought to England." 



This is probably one of the earliest accounts of the commercial value 

 of the fur-seal skins. 



- 850. In the eighteenth century navigators continue to report the 

 abundance of seals. Thus Captain Wood Rogers, taking- Alexander 

 Selkirk oft' the Island of Juan Fernandez in 1700, records a lengthy 

 description of the fur-seal seen there at that date.* 



851. The amount of information at this period extant on the fur-seal 

 is well emphasized by Ohapliiin Eichard Walter, of Lord Anson's flag- 

 ship which refitted at Juan Fernandez from June to September 1740. 

 This chaplain gives a very full and elaborate account of all the natural 

 features of the islands and of their Fauna and Flora, but he dismisses 

 seals in the single sentence: "The seal, numbers of which haunt this 

 island, hath been so often mentioned by former writers tliat it is unnec- 

 essary to say anything i)articular about them in this place." 



852. Captain Carteret, writing of Masafuera in 17(>7, says: "The 

 seals were so numerous that I verily think if many thousands were 

 killed in a night they would not be missed in the morning; we were 

 obliged to kill a noted nundjer of them as, when we walked the shore 

 they were continually running against us, making at the same time a 

 most terrible noise. These animals yield excellent train oil, and their 

 hearts and plucks were very good eating, being in taste something like 

 those of a hog, and their skins were covered with the finest fur I ever 

 saw of the kind." 



853. Captain Cook, in his official Keportof the voyage of the "Reso- 

 lution" in 1771, calling attention to the great number of fur-seal on New 

 Georgia, is generally credited with being first to direct the attention of 

 the English adventurers to the commercial advantages of South Sea 

 sealing. But before this period, and i)robably following on the sug- 

 gestions made as early as KiOO, Englishmen were already at work on 

 this new harvest of the sea. Thus, when Bucjireli, the Spanish Gov- 

 ernor at Buenos Ayres, sought to recover the Falkland Islands for 

 Spain in 1770, his first task was to forcibly eject from their established 

 port and station the " English sealers" at port Egmont, an act for which 

 Spain afterwards made full restitution. 



854. Before the end of the eighteenth century sealing in tlie South 

 Seas had assumed very extensive dimensions. Not only were the furs 

 regarded as of great value, but the oil, technically known at the time 

 as " train-oil," assumed an important commercial i)osition. Attention 

 seems to have been first directed to the islands and coasts of South. 

 America. We hear of no less a number than 1,000,000 skins being 

 taken to Canton, from the neighbourhood of Masafuera in one year, in 

 1798, while before the seals were exterminated on that one island in 

 1807, no less than 3,500,000 skins had been taken. 



855. All along the coast of Chile and Peru, even as far north as the 

 Islands of St. Felix and on the Galapagos group, seals were hunted. 



* Korr's ' ' Voyages," vol. xi. 

 B S, PT VI 14 



